Christa Päffgen, better known as Nico, was never known for cheery songs. Her apocalyptic rendering of The Doors' 'The End' was typical of her doom-laden character.
In this album based around desolate thoughts and lyrics she wrote though never recorded, the menacing image of the killer on Jim Morrison's highway is extended so the road itself becomes a personification of death.
The Soundwalk Collective, namely Stephen Crasmeanscki, Simone Merli and Kamran Sadeghi, specialise in location-based sound installations and here create an appropriately sinister sonic backdrop to the intensely introspective words.
Nico tragically died aged 49 in the Summer of 1988 after suffering a heart attack while cycling on the island of Ibiza. Sonic waves, and the sound of squawking birds, offer up a dark soundtrack to this fatal last ride.
More significantly this trio are joined by Patti Smith, no less, and her daughter Jesse Paris Smith who conceived this project in what is referred to as an "exploration" of mortality rather than merely a tribute to the singer.
The nine songs, three of which were recorded live, conjure up a sinister dead of night atmosphere when isolation weighs heaviest and is felt more deeply.
Jesse Paris Smith does not sing or speak, her role on percussion helps create the eerie electro-organic ambience that backs her mother's spoken voice.
Patti Smith's delivery, often no more than a whisper, is faultless, drawing out every essence of pathos and melancholy.
"Midnight winds are landing at the end of time", she sighs on Evening Of Light while the line "you may sing the void for me" on Fearfully In Danger encapsulates a haunting (and haunted) tone that drifts between mourning and yearning and seems to confront the grim reaper face to face.
Not a comforting listen, but this is a bold and an evocatively imagined album that works on both a poetic and musical level. <
